William Gilmore Simms
Encyclopedia
William Gilmore Simms was a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, novelist and historian from the American South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

. His writings achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced. In recent decades, Simms's novels have fallen out of favor, although he is still known among literary scholars as a major force in antebellum Southern literature. He is also remembered for his strong support of slavery and for his opposition to Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....

, in response to which he wrote reviews and a novel.

Life and work

Simms was born on April 17, 1806, in Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...

, of Scottish-Irish ancestors. His mother died during his infancy, and his father failed in business and joined Coffee's Indian fighters; as a result, Simms was brought up by his grandmother. In his teen years, he worked as a clerk in a drug store but began to study law at the age of eighteen. He married Anne Malcolm Giles in 1826. The bar of Charleston admitted him to practice in 1827, though he soon abandoned this profession for literature.

Early writings

He first wrote poetry at the age of eight, and in his 19th year he produced a monody
Monody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....

 on General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Cotesworth “C. C.” Pinckney , was an early American statesman of South Carolina, Revolutionary War veteran, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He was twice nominated by the Federalist Party as their presidential candidate, but he did not win either election.-Early life and...

 (Charleston, 1825). Two years later, in 1827, Lyrical and Other Poems and Early Lays appeared. In 1828 he became a journalist as well as editor and part owner of the City Gazette, a role he held until 1832 when the publication failed. Simms then devoted his attention entirely to writing and in rapid succession published Tile Vision of Cones, Cain, and Other Poems (1829); The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris (1830); and his strongest poem, Atalantis, a Tale of the Sea (1832). Atalantis established his fame as an author. His novel Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, an expanded version of an earlier short story called "The Confessions of a Murderer", was published in 1833 and made Simms known to a national audience.

Novels about the South

Simms wrote a number of popular novels between 1830 and 1860, usually focusing on the pre-colonial and colonial periods of Southern history. These included such titles as The Yemassee (1835); The Lily and the Totem, or, The Huguenots in Florida (1850); Vasconselos (1853); and The Cassique of Kiawah (1859). Many critics believe The Cassique of Kiawah to be Simms's best written work. At first, Southern readers, especially those in his home town of Charleston did not support Simms's work because he lacked an aristocratic background. Eventually, however, he was referred to as the Southern version of James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...

 and Charleston residents invited him into their prestigious St. Cecilia Society
St. Cecilia Society
The St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, South Carolina, named for the traditional patron saint of music, was formed in 1766 as a private subscription concert organization. Over the next fifty-four years, its annual concert series formed the most sophisticated musical phenomenon in North America...

.

Simms also wrote eight novels set in South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

, beginning with The Partisan (1835), which was likely Simms's most-read novel, and Katherine Walton (1851). Other titles included Mellichampe (1836), The Kinsmen (1841), The Forayers (1855), Eutaw (1856), and Joscelyn (1867). Finally, Simms wrote ten novels dealing with the expansion into the frontier territory from Georgia to Louisiana, such as Richard Hurdis; or, the Avenger of Blood. A Tale of Alabama (1838) and Border Beagles: A Tale of Mississippi (1840). In 1852, Simms published The Tennessean’s Story, his only full-length work of Southern humor. He also wrote poetry and, in a letter to literary critic and poet Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Rufus Wilmot Griswold was an American anthologist, editor, poet, and critic. Born in Vermont, Griswold left home when he was 15 years old. He worked as a journalist, editor, and critic in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. He built up a strong literary reputation, in part due to his 1842...

, Simms said that he was not interested in form as much as content, torn "between the desire to appear correct, and the greater desire to be original and true".

As historian

Simms was one of the best, and most respected, historians of his day. His History of South Carolina (1842) served for several generations as the standard school textbook on the state's history. He also wrote enormously popular biographies of Revolutionary War heroes Francis Marion
Francis Marion
Francis Marion was a military officer who served in the American Revolutionary War. Acting with Continental Army and South Carolina militia commissions, he was a persistent adversary of the British in their occupation of South Carolina in 1780 and 1781, even after the Continental Army was driven...

, Nathanael Greene
Nathanael Greene
Nathanael Greene was a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. When the war began, Greene was a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United...

, and John Laurens
John Laurens
John Laurens was an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the Revolutionary War. He gained approval by the Continental Congress in 1779 to recruit a regiment of 3000 slaves by promising them freedom in return for fighting...

, as well as John Smith and the Chevalier Bayard. Additionally, Simms was a popular lecturer on American history and accumulated one of the largest collections of Revolutionary War manuscripts. Unfortunately, most of this collection was lost when Sherman's
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...

 army burned his home.

Pro-slavery writings

Simms is also remembered today for his strong support of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 and for his opposition to Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...

 abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....

, in response to which he wrote reviews and a book. His Anti-Tom novel was The Sword and the Distaff.

Even though The Sword and the Distaff came out only a few months after Stowe's novel, it contains a number of sections and discussions that are clearly debating Stowe's book and view of slavery. The novel focuses on the Revolutionary War and its aftermath through the lives of Captain Porgy and one of his slaves. Many of Simms other writings took a similar pro-slavery viewpoint.

Simms' book was one of between twenty and thirty Anti-Tom novels written after Stowe's book. As in Simms' book, these novels tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over child-like slaves in a benevolent extended-family-style plantation. Simms' novel was popular enough that it was reprinted in 1854 under the title Woodcraft.

Later life

In Simms' later years, he became part of the Southern plantation class
Plantations in the American South
Plantations were an important aspect of the history of the American South, particularly the antebellum .-Planter :The owner of a plantation was called a planter...

 and firmly supported slavery and Southern secession
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

. During the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, Simms espoused the side of the Secessionists in a weekly newspaper and suffered damage at the hands of the Federal troops when they entered Charleston. He served in the state House of Representatives
Alabama House of Representatives
The Alabama House of Representatives is the lower house of the Alabama Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Alabama. The House is composed of 105 members representing an equal amount of districts, with each constituency containing at least 42,380 citizens. There are no term...

 in 1844–1846, after which he was defeated in the election for lieutenant governor by only one vote. The University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

 conferred on him the degree of LL.D
Doctor of law
Doctor of Law or Doctor of Laws is a doctoral degree in law. The application of the term varies from country to country, and includes degrees such as the LL.D., Ph.D., J.D., J.S.D., and Dr. iur.-Argentina:...

. He wrote little after the Civil War, though he compiled an anthology of Southern war poems in 1866. Simms died at his home at 13 Society Street in Charleston on June 11, 1870. He is buried in Magnolia Cemetery.

Critical response and legacy

By the mid-1840s, Simms's fame for his novels was so great that Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 declared Simms to be "The best novelist which this country has, on the whole, produced" and "immeasurably the greatest writer of fiction in America". Simms's story collection The Wigwam and the Cabin was singled out by Poe as "decidedly the most American of American books". However, despite having achieved a very good literary reputation during his lifetime, today Simms' novels are, for the most part, out of print. Still, he is known among literary scholars as a major force in Antebellum literature.

A large bust of Simms is centrally located in Charleston's Battery Park
Battery Park (Charleston)
Battery Park , which includes a park known as White Point Gardens, is a landmark promenade in Charleston, South Carolina famous for its stately antebellum homes. First used as a public park in 1837, it became a place for artillery during the American Civil War...

.

List of works

  • Lyrical and Other Poems (1827)
  • Tile Vision of Cones, Cain, and Other Poems (1829)
  • The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris (1830)
  • Atalantis, a Tale of the Sea (1832).
  • Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal (1833)
  • The Yemassee (1835)
  • The Partisan (1835)
  • Mellichampe (1836)
  • Richard Hurdis; or, the Avenger of Blood. A Tale of Alabama (1838)
  • Border Beagles: A Tale of Mississippi (1840)
  • The Kinsmen (1841)
  • History of South Carolina (1842)
  • The Lily and the Totem, or, The Huguenots in Florida (1850)
  • Katherine Walton (1851)
  • The Tennessean's Story (1852)
  • Vasconselos (1853)
  • Woodcraft (1854)
  • The Forayers (1855)
  • Eutaw (1856)
  • The Cassique of Kiawah (1859)
  • Joscelyn (1867)

External links

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